CASA move puts carriers in check
Fri "The Australian"
CASA move puts carriers in check
By Steve Creedy, Aviation writer
June 04, 2004
MAINTENANCE systems at major airlines will be put under the spotlight by the aviation regulator from next month in a new wave of special safety checks aimed at scrutinising areas of risk.
The new checks will be performed by dedicated teams of safety inspectors and are in addition to existing six-monthly airline audits.
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) expects to identify two areas of risk to airlines each year that it will scrutinise on an industry-wide basis.
About 40 large and medium-sized carriers across Australia - including Qantas, Virgin Blue and the regional airlines - will be subject to the first wave of checks into maintenance control systems.
Problems in this area have previously cropped up at major airlines, including Virgin Blue and the now defunct Ansett. This was partly why maintenance control topped a list of risks compiled by CASA's compliance arm, a spokesman said.
CASA chief executive Bruce Byron said CASA's existing airline audit and surveillance program was effective but it was now time to dig deeper.
He said inspectors would examine how airlines were performing to ensure they were all achieving optimum safety levels.
This would give CASA a good understanding of the performance of each airline - as well as an overall industry health check, Mr Byron said.
It also showed that CASA was striving to improve its own performance levels by refining an already successful auditing system.
"CASA has been subjected to criticism from various quarters over the year for inconsistency in the way it does some of its activities," Mr Bryon said.
"I felt this was a practical way to make sure that we do something that's got a definite safety basis in terms of outcome and we try to address some of the real - and possibly some of the perceived - problems of delivering it in a consistent manner."
Airlines have been told to expect the new checks and will be kept abreast of any new industry-wide problems that are uncovered.
"This provides an opportunity for us - depending on what we get out of it - to go back to industry and say, 'Here are some suggestions on how, across the board, you can do things better'," Mr Byron said.
CASA staff are still working to determine the issues to be investigated at airlines, but the authority hopes to introduce a similar process for general aviation.
"I have asked the general aviation sector to look at this approach and over the next few months come up with a suggested way we can apply a risk-based approach," Mr Byron said. "The only tricky thing here is that general aviation is a little bit different in that there might be topics that are considered risks in one part of the country that aren't likely in other parts of the country."
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